Lately, many Linfield attendees have complained about lower-quality Wi-Fi and more frequent interruptions to their internet connection. Most interviewed students agreed with that assessment, though it impacted them in varied ways.

Sophomore biology major Ben Moore, who lives in Anderson Hall, shared that he recently had connection interruptions where none existed before.

“If I want to watch something or do homework and the internet cuts out, I cannot do it, and that is frustrating,” said Moore.

Senior JAMS major Brian Kice believed that the Wi-Fi had never been that good, especially when he was gaming or needed to upload a file twice to the new Blackboard Ultra, but at least it had felt functional before recent months. The internet connection quality has only decreased over his four years at Linfield, though the recent downturn may have been due in part to a storm.

“There were a couple of storms about a month or a month and a half ago that took out some cell towers in Carlton, and that kind of screwed up the signal for the entire county,” said Kice. “Because of that, the Wi-Fi has taken a significant step down in the past month, but it has never been great.”

The Wi-Fi quality appeared to vary depending on what students were using it for. The campus Wi-Fi was only somewhat slow for fifth-year transfer and exercise science major Alexander Suarez, who lives off-campus, and only used it to access Linfield services.

“But when I am trying to log in to my assignments online, when I am using the Wi-Fi, it takes a bit to get into the systems,” said Suarez.

When asked about recent Wi-Fi problems and possible causes, chief ITS information officer Nate Gage had not heard of any such issues, but encouraged students experiencing connection issues to contact IT. In recent months, IT has received a normal level of support tickets for Wi-Fi issues at around one per week.

“We are not currently aware of any widespread Wi-Fi quality issues on campus, and we have not made any recent changes to the Wi-Fi networks,” said Gage. “Our ticket volume for Wi-Fi-related requests has remained low and consistent with what we would typically expect.”

Senior exercise science major Sofia Píetrok, who lives in the Hewlett Packard Park C Apartment, had issues doing anything on both her phone and her computer.

“My computer Wi-Fi stopped working,” said Píetrok. “My phone was really bad; I would have to use my data for everything. To send a text, on any social media, to load, I would have to use my data.”

Meanwhile, sophomore education major Dylan Howell, who lives in Terrell Hall, believed that the Wi-Fi quality had decreased to the point that he could no longer use his computer properly.

“I cannot do anything on my computer,” said Howell. “The past couple days of doing my finals, I definitely feel like it has been worse.”

 However, junior international business major Emma Gallegos, who lives in the Hewlett Packard Park apartments, noticed a slight improvement on her phone.

“I feel like it is better on my phone, but my computer is still really slow,” said Gallegos.

The only certainty about Linfield Internet is that bad Wi-Fi is a bad time, especially this close to finals. Until we meet again, may you have five bars.